AWS Case Study: Web Dev Firm Boosts eCommerce Performance & Security

At Flux7, we get the opportunity to work with organizations across many industries and with a variety of challenges. As a result, we often get asked how other companies approach and solve different challenges. One challenge we are frequently asked about is website performance, security and elasticity, especially as it relates to eCommerce. As such, we’re happy to share with you today the story of a customer who was looking to balance these goals and how with the help of Flux7 consultants they were able to do so.

This organization specializes in web development projects specifically for firms with online video streaming needs, building everything their client needs for an eCommerce storefront. From creating custom store designs on the front end and hosting, streaming, securing, and updating on the back end, this organization needed to build and manage an optimized technology infrastructure to stay competitive.

They sought to deliver maximum performance for customers’ eCommerce implementations, which was especially important given the demands of high definition video that their clients were streaming. Moreover, they also needed to support the security demands of an eCommerce site.

The firm turned to the AWS security experts at Flux7 to help it build an infrastructure that could over-deliver on the uptime, performance, and security agreements with its customers. After an assessment of the company’s existing AWS implementation and architecture, Flux7 consultants recommended the use of Amazon CloudFront in conjunction with AWS Web Application Firewall (for which we have received AWS Service Delivery Partner Status) and AWS Elastic Load Balancer or greater content speeds, and security at less cost to the organization.

The first thing the team did was to implement monitoring and logging tools that gave the team better situational awareness. Once we established a firm understanding of the issues, we determined that it would be best to build for this client a solid foundation using automation so that changes could be incrementally weaved in over a period of time. Following this, one of the first changes we made was a lift and shift to AWS CloudFormation, a tool that helps developers and sysadmins create, manage and provision resources through templates.

Next, the teams worked together to create a workflow for adding a new website. They used Jenkins jobs to populate SSL certificates on AWS and setup CloudFront distributions, making sure to have a separate CloudFront distribution for each website. Using CloudFront for this organization’s client websites was important as the AWS service speeds up content delivery by offering content to Web surfers from edge locations nearest them. Last, Flux7 implemented the use of AWS Web Application Firewall at this client, helping ensure website security through the use of rules, such as whitelists, blacklists, cross-site scripting attack detection, and SQL Injection Detection. For this firm, Flux7 was able to decrease costs and grow scalability and elasticity. And, the use of CloudFront reduced the load on this organization’s servers, simultaneously making content delivery faster and more reliable. CloudFront was able to deliver this level of performance despite a large increase in traffic and business during the holiday season.

For additional details on the solution architecture to ensure operational efficiency and security, you can read the full case study here. Interested in boosting your website performance, security and elasticity with AWS?Read more AWS case studies here or subscribe to our blog for ongoing tips, use cases, and analysis.

Flux7 is the only Sherpa on the DevOps journey that assesses, designs, and teaches while implementing a holistic solution for its enterprise customers, thus giving its clients the skills needed to manage and expand on the technology moving forward. Not a reseller or an MSP, Flux7 recommendations are 100% focused on customer requirements and creating the most efficient infrastructure possible that automates operations, streamlines and enhances development, and supports specific business goals.